"Sit down, Katharine. These wild gestures will be seen from the house, and the old people won't know what to make of it. Sit down and compose yourself. This is not the only subject we have to talk about."
"I know it—I know it; but the thought of carrying the grief to my mother kills me."
"This is childish—I will submit to it no longer," cried Thrasher, beginning to lose patience. "Sit down, I say, and control yourself!" He took hold of her hands, grasping them till they burned with pain, and drew her forcibly to the rock. She looked at him breathlessly; the expression of his face frightened her.
"Now that you can be still," he said, sternly, "I have a great deal to say about our conversation last night. Will you try and listen like a rational creature?"
She was sobbing bitterly, and could only give an assent by a motion of the head.
"Well, regarding the senseless event which you make so much of——"
"Senseless, Nelson!" She looked up, as the words left her lips, and gazed at him reproachfully through her tears.
"Yes, senseless! What else could an act like that be considered? I was a man—and should have known better. What good has it done to be in such desperate haste?"
"What good?—what good? Did we not love each other?"
Something like a sneer came to Thrasher's lip. He longed to tell her the truth. It seemed the surest means of putting her out of the way.